


Separate

by especiallythezefronposter



Series: Pieces [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Loki is the Winter Soldier, M/M, Thor is Captain America
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-18
Updated: 2014-08-18
Packaged: 2018-02-13 17:32:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2159157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/especiallythezefronposter/pseuds/especiallythezefronposter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A character study of a man out of time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Separate

**Author's Note:**

> I think it might come in handy to have a list of which character is which superhero in this 'verse, so here it is:  
> Thor: Captain America  
> Loki: The Winter Soldier  
> Sif: Agent Carter  
> Jane Foster: Falcon  
> Bruce Banner: Black Widow  
> Natasha Romanoff: Iron Man  
> Tony Stark: Hawkeye  
> Steve Rogers: Hulk  
> Clint Barton: God of Thunder (though he isn't in the story, unfortunately)  
> Pepper Potts: Phil Coulson  
> Natasha's mother is briefly mentioned and takes the place of Howard Stark as friend of Captain America and co-founder of S.H.I.E.L.D.

There's a moment that everything moves in slow motion - or maybe that's only how Thor remembers it. There's a moment that Loki's hand almost touches his, the other one clinging to the useless, broken-off handle. There's a moment that Thor thinks _If I grab his hand and pull him back up, we can finish this. If I grab his hand and pull him back up, we can all go home._

Then Loki is falling and Thor never thinks of going home again.

- 

'This thing is moving too fast and it's heading for New York. I have to put her in the water.'

Sif says, 'There has to be another way,' and he knows she has already thought up a plan to save the city without having to sacrifice him. He's grateful that she asks him out for a date instead, that she lets him have this, peace, and doesn't make him explain to her why he needs it.

He dies with a smile on his lips because at least she will live a long life. At least she will do great things.

- 

He wakes up in the twenty first century and isn't surprised. New York has changed and he isn't surprised. He stands barefoot amidst the dizzying combination of billboards and people dressed in colors brighter than he has ever seen before and yellow cars rushing by and thinks, _we can never go home_.

- 

At first he only remembers steering the plane into the sea and Sif and him whispering lies to each other to comfort themselves. Then everything else comes back, slowly.

The night he remembers Loki, remembers how he died, he cries until he thinks he might be having an asthma attack.

- 

He doesn't visit Sif as often as he should, because sometimes she forgets things, like who he is or that he's still alive or what year it is. Sometimes she asks him about Loki and he pretends that it's 1946 and they all went home. He talks about how they have and apartment in Brooklyn together and that they're thinking about getting married (It's legal now!) and that she should come over for dinner sometime.

Afterwards he goes home and feels as if he has been crying for hours, though he hasn't spilled a single tear. 

- 

When Director Fury shows him a picture of the Tesseract, he suddenly feels tired.

When he says, 'You should’ve left it in the ocean,' he thinks, _you should’ve left me there, too_

- 

He shakes Dr. Roger's hand on the helicarrier, wonders if the anger that makes his skin crawl late at night is a synonym of what makes the doctor turn into a monster. And if a monster that is only angry, that is only afraid, is a monster at all.

- 

He asks Iron Man why she doesn't call herself Iron Lady, why she hides her womanhood behind shapeless plates of steel as if it's something shameful. She tells him that that name was already taken, makes a comment about how old he is, does it with a smile that reminds him of her mother, reminds him of the fact that this isn't her.

He hates her right away, because she is _you died for nothing_ , she is _everything looks different but nothing really changed_.

- 

At some point he stops hating her and starts calling her Natasha. Pepper Potts dies and he asks her if she's the first soldier she's lost. He never learned how to comfort people.

She tells him that they aren't soldiers and he thinks that maybe she gets the rules better than he does. They are superheroes because they live forever and soldiers always die.

- 

For a moment he thinks that maybe he can love her, but when he tells Bruce to close the portal and watches as she falls from the sky, he feels like he is standing at the bottom of a ravine, snow soaking his shoes as he watches Loki fall and after that he never thinks of love again.

- 

He jogs faster than he usually does, says 'on your left' as he runs past the woman, shows of because he's lonely, because he's tired of being lonely.

She tells him about how she lost her best friend Darcy in Afghanistan and he thinks that maybe she dreams of watching someone fall, too.

- 

The Smithsonian gets most of it wrong, everything, really, except for Loki's death. They say they were _inseparable_. Thor can't help mouthing that word as he reads it again, breath slowly trickling past his lips. 

Death doesn't care about inseparable, he thinks.

- 

Bruce and him are in the shopping center and Thor is counting the seconds until Rumlow sees them. Then Bruce says, 'Kiss me.' A pause. 'Public displays of affection make people very uncomfortable.'

Then he's leaning in and Thor thinks that only people who have known as much violence as Bruce kiss that carefully. That when Loki kissed him it had been defiant and unafraid.

He kisses Bruce back, his stomach constricting with how long it's been, and it's not that a void opens up in his chest. It's just that only now he realizes it's there.

- 

He's driving a stolen car and Bruce is looking at him from the passenger seat, a playful smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. 'Was that the first time you ever kissed a boy?'

He remembers Bruce on the helicarrier, crouching down to touch Tony's photo on one of the screens, and thinks that maybe he will understand. 'Only in this century.'

Bruce seems to get that it wasn't just horny teenagers or lonely soldiers. 'What's his name?'

Thor knows that trick, knows that _is_ and _was_ sound the same if you shorten them and that no one asks difficult questions if you just pretend everyone is still alive. 'Loki.'

- 

'Who the hell is Loki?'

- 

When he tells Loki to finish his mission he means that if dying by Loki's hand is the most passionate, the most intimate they will ever get again, he'll take it. He means that if Loki squeezes shut his windpipe, he can mistake it for love, that if Loki puts a knife between his ribs, maybe it will fill up the void in his chest.

- 

They're standing at Fury's empty grave - Jane, Bruce and him. Jane is coming with him, so she leaves to let him say goodbye to Bruce.

He never learned how to say goodbye, so instead he says, 'Do you love Tony?'

'We go way back,' Bruce says.

'Tell him.' It sounds too forceful, the way he says it, but he wants it so bad, to believe in happy endings again.

Bruce almost smiles. 'When there's time.'

He says _when_ , not _if_ and it gives Thor hope.

- 

After six months Jane forces him onto a plane back to New York, tells him they should go home for Christmas.

 _We can never go home_.

Flying over the sea makes him twitchy, but it helps that Jane takes the seat beside the window, orders some of the disgusting snacks sold on airplanes and makes him tell her all about food in the nineteen thirties.

- 

One of Natasha's drivers is waiting for them when they arrive at the airport and tells them their stuff is already at Romanoff Tower.

- 

Nat gives them a full tour of the Tower as soon as they get there, though it's three in the morning and Thor has a jet lag so bad he can barely see straight.

Still, when she tells them they should always check with Jarvis if the gym is empty before they enter, since Tony and Bruce don't exactly lock the door when they fuck in there, Thor smiles.

- 

He spends Christmas in the Hulk-proof chamber that Natasha and Steve use for experiments sometimes.

When he came downstairs that morning, Loki had been sitting in the living room with Jane. 'He asked for you,' she had said.

- 

Loki doesn't speak much, just listens as Thor tells him about this century and the one before that, though Loki knows more about the last seventy years than he does.

Sometimes, when Loki seems relaxed enough, he tells him about their lives before the war, about Brooklyn and the orphanage and about the times Loki tried to find him a date and it ended in disaster.

It seems to confuse Loki. 'I remembered,' he starts, frowning. 'I remember I loved you.'

'You did,' Thor says carefully, gently. No one ever though him to be gentle, but for Loki, he tries.

'Then why...'

'Because you loved me.'

- 

Two days later, Loki escapes.

The common floor has to be rebuild, and one of Steve and Natasha's labs, too, but no one seems to mind much, because Loki comes back three hours later with an apology on his lips and his own blood underneath his fingernails. 'It's my programming,' he says, waving a hand as if trying to bat his thoughts away. 'Escape, escape, escape.'

- 

Thor watches from the control room as Bruce and Loki speak in Russian.

Tony is standing beside him and says, 'I don't get all of it, but they're talking about sex... love. Loki remembers most of your relationship, but doesn't understand all of it.' He turns to look at Thor. 'Do you still love him?'

'I can't stop.' He never learned how not to love Loki. 'I don't want to stop.'

- 

Loki moves to an actual bedroom six days later. Natasha proposed it before and he only agrees now because he gets a room on Thor's floor, which means someone can take him out before he does any serious harm.

He sleeps more than he did in the white room, and wakes up screaming most of the time. Thor is always there to tell him where he is and he's always there to hold his hand until he falls asleep and wakes up again.

- 

The first time they kiss in this century it's soft, Thor's tears running between their lips. Loki tells him it's okay and Thor almost laughs because that's his line.

He leans in again and thinks, _this is not the last time_.


End file.
